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Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |
Apple downgrades its third quarter earnings
MacCentral notes that Apple revises Q3 guidance down, citing slow computer and software sales that are plaguing much of the computer industry right now.
I am amazed that Apple hasn't suffered more from the downturn in the economy before now. Only an innovative product line including the G4 flat-screen iMac have kept Apple above the rest of the industry over the last couple of quarters...
3:43:39 PM 
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Charles Moore looks at the Pismo upgrades
In an article posted yesterday on Applelinks, Charles Moore compares the recently announced G4 processor upgrades for the Pismo PowerBooks in Some thoughts on the new PowerBook Pismo G4 upgrades. His conclusion: It is tempting to consider the upgrade for the benefits of Altivec graphics processing in supported applications like PhotoShop, and in the OS X Finder...
2:26:48 PM
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Can ThinkFree woo OS X users?
Software maker wooing Mac Office users. ThinkFree, hoping to grab Mac OS X customers away from Microsoft, offers a $50 combination of word processing, graphics and spreadsheet software--to the giant's $499 package. [CNET News.com]
My thoughts on the topic: ThinkFree will appeal to people like me, who tend not to trust or want much to do with Microsoft products but who need to be able to work with the rest of the world that has bought into the Microsoft product line. At this point in time, it is suicide to avoid at least using programs that are compatible with or that can translate Microsoft Office applications, because so many others use Office programs. In my case, I still use an aging version of Word 98 under Classic when I absolutely cannot get by with AppleWorks or some other OS X-native solution...
1:41:43 PM
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Three days, 800 miles, 148 species of birds...a fun weekend
I missed updating Mac Net Journal for three days around this past weekend because I was away from home, traveling and watching birds in Eastern Washington with the local Audubon Society. During our three-day trip we covered 800 miles across the northern and central part of the state, and along the way we saw at least 148 species of birds and tons of butterflies (which, unfortunately, I didn't have much time to watch).
The last stop of the day was at the Loup Loup campground, just off the North Cascades Highway that is often mentioned as one of the most scenic highways in the U.S., and after eating lunch and being treated to great views of a Williamson's Sapsucker in the campground, we found the Barred Owl shown in this photo. It responded to a tape recorded Barred Owl call and flew right into the campground, offering some great chances to view the bird through our spotting scope and binoculars. I took the photo using our Nikon Coolpix 950 held up to the eye piece on our Swift spotting scope. What a spectacular bird!
1:21:15 PM
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EIMS updated to version 3.1.3
Eudora Internet Mail Server v3.1.3. - EIMS is a scriptable, standards based Internet mail server. Version changes: Fixed limits on connections from the same host not including threads cleaning up. Fixed TCP listener deafness problem under some types of heavy load. When an auto-reply fails, it now says what account the auto-reply is for. Fixed error -108 when adding IP ranges via AppleEvents. Fixed IP ranges and relay domains added by AppleEvents not being saved if EIMS is quit. [AppleScript Info]
12:10:42 PM
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CNET covers 802.11 West conference
Catching the wireless wave. roundup Wi-Fi technology has the spotlight this week at the 802.11 West conference in Seattle, where Microsoft, Toshiba and others are finding more ways to put wireless to work. [CNET News.com]
11:34:53 AM
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Get well soon, Dave...
Here is an update on my friend and boss Dave Winer. He is in the hospital and will remain there until next weekend. To those that are sending notes, he should be OK, but in the meantime send positive healing thoughts in his direction. He will be providing more details when he is able. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
10:58:50 AM
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StickyBrain updated to version 2.0.1
StickyBrain v2.0.1. - StickyBrain is a scriptable personal productivity application that incorporates a sticky note interface. This release includes several bug fixes. [version history] [AppleScript Info]
10:19:00 AM
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Microsoft updates Internet Explorer, but beware the upgrade
TidBITS noted yesterday that Internet Explorer 5.2 Adds Quartz Text Smoothing, but the article and others posted while I was gone over my three-day weekend note some problems with the installation process for this OS X-only update to Explorer. Among the problems, the installer forces you to quit all other applications before doing the update (which is odd among OS X installers), and once the new version is loaded your home page in IE will be changed to point to MSN. It is easy to change the home page option back to your original choice, but it is this kind of Borg-like activity that leaves Mac users with a sour taste in their mouths when dealing with Microsoft products.
Note that the only new feature in IE 5.2 is text smoothing, the same feature you can already get by installing the free Silk program. Oh...loading Silk won't change your home page, force you to quit all of your applications, or force you to be assimilated into Microsoft's vision of computing. I will stick with IE 5.1.4...
UPDATE: If you do decide to make the switch to IE 5.2 you may want to take a look at Macintouch's IE 5.x Reader Report about issues people are having with the new version. Among the problems noted so far: Home page preferences being changed - including one user who changed his home page preference and then had it revert back to the MSN home page after a restart, and a user who confirms that IE still cannot handle personally signed SSL certificates (which is why I use OmniWeb to deal with those kinds of sites).
10:02:49 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
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